Grandma groped by TSA blasts 'invasive' body search

RYE — A local grandmother's Nov. 12 wardrobe choice of cargo pants with zippers made her victim of the federal government's new full-body pat-down searches at airports.

Comment

By Elizabeth Dinan

seacoastonline.com

By Elizabeth Dinan

Posted Nov. 18, 2010 at 11:57 AM
Updated Nov 18, 2010 at 12:33 PM

By Elizabeth Dinan

Posted Nov. 18, 2010 at 11:57 AM
Updated Nov 18, 2010 at 12:33 PM

» Social News

RYE — A local grandmother's Nov. 12 wardrobe choice of cargo pants with zippers made her victim of the federal government's new full-body pat-down searches at airports.

Diane Bitter said she was passing through Manchester Airport en route to Arizona last Friday when her pants zippers triggered a metal detector.

“Of course you can't just take your pants off,” she said, explaining she was then directed to step aside for an “insane” inspection.

“Right out in the middle of everything,” a female airport screener began patting Bitter's body in places she did not expect.

“She touched my private parts,” said Bitter.

Pressed for details, the 67-year-old Rye Beach resident said the airport employee put her hands inside the waistband of her pants, felt around her waist, passed her hands over both her breasts, and rubbed her hands up and down the insides of her legs - “twice in front and twice in back.”

“As it got more invasive, I thought, ‘why am I consenting to this?'” she said. “It was totally humiliating.”

Bitter said after the screener “finished feeling me all over,” she removed a pair of blue latex gloves, rubbed them with “a detecting pad,” put the gloves into a machine and got a reading clearing Bitter for hazardous substances.

“I didn't hang around to see if anyone else got the treatment,” she said.

Bitter, a frequent traveler, said if she knew in advance what was going to happen at Manchester Airport that morning, she would have made a different wardrobe selection.

“I'm certainly not going to wear those cargo pants again. I promise you that,” she said. “I'll wear pajamas.”

If she found herself in the same position again, she said she'd ask for a private location to remove her pants so she could pass through the metal detector without them.

“They should perform these tests in the privacy of a closed space, not out there in the open,” she said.

At the same time, Bitter lauded the airport screener as “very professional.”

“I understand she was doing her job,” she said.

She also understands the reason for the pat-downs.

“I realize we've got to be safe in the air,” said Bitter. “But do we really need to go to this extreme?”

The federal Transportation Security Administration recently amended the pat-down procedure to allow airport screeners to use the fronts of their hands to touch passengers' inner thighs, buttocks and breasts.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, passengers being screened “are supposed to be given privacy during these more invasive pat-downs and the searches are supposed to be done by screeners of the same sex.”

The ACLU is collecting reports from passengers about their pat-down experiences and advertising that it wants to hear from passengers who “suffered from rough, rude and humiliating manhandling and groping of breasts and crotch areas, sexual comments, and a lack of privacy.”

The new screening process made headlines earlier this week when John Tyner, 31, was evicted from San Diego International Airport after telling an airport screener, “If you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested.”